What is the extent of climate change? That will be determined by how long we continue to emit greenhouse gases and how our climate system reacts to them. Despite growing awareness of climate change, our greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar at an alarming rate. For the first time in human history, the daily level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million in 2013. The last time levels were that high was during the Pliocene Epoch, about three to five million years ago.

Because we are now committed to some degree of climate change, we must take a two-pronged approach to combating it:

  • Adapting to climate change that is already underway (“adaptation”);
  • Mitigating climate change by reducing emissions and stabilizing levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (“mitigation”).

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Figure 7 – Activists’’ poster

Adaptation and Mitigation

Adapting to life in a changing environment entails making adjustments to the current and expected future climate. The aim is to decrease our vulnerability to climate change's negative consequences (like sea-level encroachment, more intense extreme weather events or food insecurity). It also includes making the most of any potentially helpful climate change opportunities (for example, longer growing seasons or increased yields in some regions).

People and cultures have responded to and coped with changes in climate and extremes to varying degrees of success throughout history.

Climate change (and particularly drought) has played a role in the rise and fall of civilizations. For the past 12,000 years, Earth's climate has been comparatively stable, which has been beneficial for the survival of our modern civilization and life as we know it. The stable climate to which we have grown used has shaped modern life. We will have to learn to adapt as our climate changes. The more rapidly the climate changes, the more difficult it may become. While climate change is a global problem, it has a local impact. As a result, cities and countries are at the forefront of adaptation.

Cities and local governments around the country have been focusing on addressing their own climate issues in the absence of national or international climate policy direction. They're working to develop flood defences, prepare for heat waves and warmer temperatures, and install water-permeable pavements to better handle flooding and stormwater.

Governments at all levels are improving their adaptation skills, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2014 report on Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (»).

Climate change is beginning to be incorporated into a wide range of development plans, along with how to manage the increasingly extreme disasters we're seeing and the risks they pose, how to safeguard coastlines and deal with sea-level incursion, how to better handle land as well as forests, how to cope with and plan for water scarcity, how to grow resilient crop varieties, and how to preserve energy and public infrastructure.